U.S. manufacturing activity in December surged to its highest level in more than two years despite supply chain disruptions and Covid-19-related employment constraints. The Institute for Supply Management’s purchasing index, the PMI, reached 60.7 last month, an increase of 3.2 percent from its November reading. Any reading above 50 indicates manufacturing expansion. The tech industry…
Just five years ago, Advanced Micro Devices’ (AMD) acquisition of Xilinx would have sent shockwaves through the distribution channel. Xilinx and archrival Altera, now owned by Intel, were the last holdouts of a practice called shelf-sharing, where two competitors refuse to be sold side by side — “share shelf ” — at a single distributor.…
It would be hard to overstate the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic on organizations of practically every type. Industries that were prospering until last year are in bankruptcy now. Customer demand for a wide range of consumer goods has abruptly shifted. Countless public institutions and nonprofit organizations which had been viable until the beginning of…
Engineers aren’t that different from procurement professionals — they have more to do and less time to do it. And, like purchasing experts, they are happy with their jobs. More than 1,400 engineers participated in a semi- annual survey conducted by AspenCore Media publications EETimes and EDN. The 2020 edition of the “Mind of the…
Lynn Torrel, Flex’s chief supply chain and procurement officer, was three months on the job when a deadly viral outbreak locked down Wuhan, China. The global electronics manufacturer knew its employees, operations and supply chain faced an unprecedented challenge. “In mid-January we were hearing about the outbreak in Asia, and through talking with our suppliers,…
The phrase you hear a lot from supply chain executives this year is they can’t control the decisions of their suppliers and customers, nor can they constrain a global pandemic. But manufacturing and procurement organizations can mitigate the impact of such events and are focusing on things they can manage. Gartner outlines three trends that…
The global market for digital procurement software is growing extraordinarily fast—nearly twice as fast as the overall software market according to one Forrester report. This news is certainly remarkable, but it is far from surprising. Digital solutions leveraging big data analytics and AI-powered automations have enabled teams to streamline workflows, increase savings, lower costs, improve…
The events of 2020 have shaken the very pillars of global supply chain and manufacturing organizations. The effects have been widespread and costly, but they have also revealed the need for us to revisit and rethink our approach to sourcing and procurement. While strategic sourcing has been a known method since the first 8-step model…
Disasters have a way of elevating procurement operations to saviors of the day, week or month. But once a crisis has passed, purchasing reverts back to its identity as a corporate cost center. Covid-19 could strengthen purchasing’s position as a corporate risk-management resource. The pandemic has raised the supply chain to a topic of national…
The combined challenges of the Covid-19 pandemic and the United States-China trade war have created somewhat of a perfect storm for electronics procurement specialists. As a supply shortage abounds, they must think ahead and respond promptly to avoid the worst effects. The trade war causes numerous knock-on effects The trade war between the United States…